JTS Graduate Student Receives Prestigious Fellowship

Beverly Bailis Is Honored with AAUW Grant

October 14, 2010, New York, NY

Beverly Bailis, a PhD student at The Graduate School of The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), has received a 2010–2011 American Fellowship from AAUW (formerly known as the American Association of University Women).

Ms. Bailis is a doctoral candidate in Modern Jewish Literature. Her dissertation, which she is now writing, is entitled “Fantasies of Modernity: Cultural Representations of Jewishness and Female Sexuality in Early Twentieth-Century Hebrew and Yiddish Literature.” She has taught at JTS (Modern Jewish Literature), in the Alma New York series at the JCC in Manhattan, at Town and Village Synagogue in Manhattan, and at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn. Ms. Bailis has contributed to the Forward and to a study guide on women’s poetry in Hebrew for the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism. She is the former coordinator of the Jewish Feminist Research Group, a project of the Jewish Gender and Women’s Studies program at JTS. This winter she will be participating in a roundtable discussion at the Association for Jewish Studies Conference entitled “New Directions in Jewish Modernism.”

“I am honored to receive this generous AAUW dissertation fellowship,” says Ms. Bailis, “especially because it promotes scholarship specifically by women. It is also exciting that a project about Hebrew and Yiddish literatures, which are, perhaps, less on the map than other national literatures, are receiving this kind of recognition and interest outside the scope of Jewish studies. Applicants for this fellowship consist of women in any academic field, and I believe that receiving such a fellowship reflects the growing relevance of both Hebrew and Yiddish literature within the humanities at large.”

AAUW’s American Fellowships are awarded to women scholars completing doctoral dissertations, conducting postdoctoral research, or finishing research for publication. AAUW has a long and distinguished history of advancing educational and professional opportunities for women in the United States and around the world. Due to the longstanding, generous contributions of AAUW members, a broader community of women continues to gain access to educational and economic opportunities—breaking through barriers so that all women have a fair chance. AAUW promotes equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy, and research. For more information, visit www.aauw.org.